Q+A Madness - January 2018

Comments

Both me and my husband plan on playing the game, and I hope to eventually RP out a relationship with him. Will our races matter in this case. One rumor I heard was because of the set bloodlines you can't cross races. This has never been an issue in other games, just wondering how it applies in Starmourn.

Latching onto @Maygon's question, will there be a distinction between bloodline and adoption? Or will it all be grouped together? Will you be able to blood-sibling someone? I think Imperian had that feature.

magee101, that's what happens with a brand-spanking new game, especially a F2P game from a small-ish company. It's not going to have immense detail right at the beginning. I think we can expect a ton of content to be added rapidly, but day 1? Yes, certain things might feel lacking. It might be better if you came in after a month or so if that's what you're hoping to find when you start playing. However, do take some other things into account too: EVERYthing in this game will be brand-spanking new too. There will be a ton to explore and I truly believe that most people will not have a chance to experience everything before they even start adding a lot. This is a chance to be in on the random fun of the start of an epic game. I missed other the start of other games and have always wanted to join one when it started.

Also, you have to look at this game differently than Achaea. This is across an entire galactic sector. The scope is enormous, and you need to consider how the scaling will be different. You suggest that you want Achaea's content on one planet, but the game isn't about ONE planet. I expect it to be exciting on a interstellar level, rather than a country, continent, or global, or even planar level. This is about relationships between entire worlds and alien species rather than city-states. That does raise a concern about how relatable it will be, but the dev team did say that they are going to work hard to shoot for making relationships relevant for players.

I'm super excited about this game and can't wait to get in and explore it personally. Given IRE's track record in the past (and a lot of their best people who have worked on IRE games in the past are building this one from scratch), I find it very difficult to believe that this game will be anything other than awesome.

The problem I am having is that my comparison to Achaea was not literal, it was used in metaphor to try and describe what I am hoping for. I don't want to see a thousand planets with so little character that I forget each one the moment I leave it. It is of course obvious that a game just coming out of development is not going to have the same amount of content as a game that is 20 years post launch. As a player, I would much rather have 5 planets that all feel unique and truly individual worlds of themselves, than 50 planets that each have one 10-20 room area to explore. The reason I was so hype for No Man's Sky is that it was going to be the first multi-planet scifi game that fully allowed you to explore a world rather than be in a few playable areas. However, No Man's Sky did not deliver very well on having unique and interesting planets in favor of having quadrillions of them.

The main reason I play text-based games is the high level of immersion I get out of them, and I am very much looking forward to getting into a scifi world that I can get immersed into, but if the game is going to be built like Mass Effect (a few playable areas per world) that immersion is going to get broken for me personally.

Now of course I am not being entirely fair as I am making comparisons without having the game itself to compare to properly. For all I know despite my now initial skepticism of how well I will enjoy the game I might get completely blown away by the dev team and they do an amazing job of nailing what I'm looking for, but mostly what got me so ruffled in the skirts is the way a member of Staff so clearly picked apart my feedback to a singular piece of said feedback and latched onto something that was not supposed to be taken literally but instead metaphorically, and then get snarky in the mean time.

Fair enough, magee! I'm hoping for as much depth as possible, too. I guess we'll have to wait and see just how much depth the planets end up having, while giving our hopes and requests for as much as possible. I'm keeping my expectations relatively high, while trying to keep a grain of reasonable doubt since it won't have as much development as other games. The numbers Tecton provided are encouraging, I think.

As T'rath has pierced the veil, so will I, and so will my life become complete in a good death.JinVOTE FOR STARMOURN

Tecton-Today at 6:17 PM

teehee b.u.t.t. pirates

GrootToday at 2:16 PM if there's no kittens in space I'm going on a rampageTectonToday at 2:17 PM They're called w'hoorn, Groot sets out a saucer of milk

Latching onto @Maygon's question, will there be a distinction between bloodline and adoption? Or will it all be grouped together? Will you be able to blood-sibling someone? I think Imperian had that feature.

We haven't decided yet. You can't just blend together bloodline and adoption though, especially if you ever want to do anything like genetic traits that pass down through families (which I think would be super cool as long as it was cosmetic only). The way we do family in Achaea isn't as satisfying as I think anyone would like, but I'm not really sure what the solution is. Part of the fundamental problem is we're dealing with a small population so it's kind of inevitable that everyone is going to be more or less related to like half of the game.
There's probably not going to be a system for this in at launch, and we'll figure it out post-launch.

In our case, all the worlds you can land on are hand-built, so even if the only areas accessible to you are a single biome, it'll still be completely different from areas on another world that have a similar biome-type.

@Aurelius I saw in a thread about how you say Fury was planned on being a more complex class to play?

What would you say is the difficulty ordering of the classes, if Fury is at the most difficult (#1). Most difficult to least difficult!

Hmm, that's a tough one. I'd say, probably:

1. BEAST2. Scoundrel or Nanoseer3. Engineer4. Fury

Fury was the only one where we explicitly wanted to make it more complex than others though, so I think the other four are more of an opinion. The classes are also bound to change a fair amount once live players get their hands on them, so we'll see how they evolve in terms of comparative difficulty.

I forget if this was mentioned before. What is the time scale in Starmourn? I know Achaea goes by months and Aetolia goes by weeks, now, for each day. I personally prefer weeks, but that's a me thing.

In-game day = rl hour.
Each Galactic year has 15 Galactic months in it, each of which is 24 days long, so there are 360 days in a year.
Each month starts at 1 am GMT so that you know that day 18 in a month is 18:00 GMT. The idea here is to make it easier for people to translate between in-game and real time.

Both me and my husband plan on playing the game, and I hope to eventually RP out a relationship with him. Will our races matter in this case. One rumor I heard was because of the set bloodlines you can't cross races. This has never been an issue in other games, just wondering how it applies in Starmourn.

This never got answered exactly... an example of what I'm asking is can a Decheeran marry a W'hoorn? And if so are they allowed to have children or not. Guess this also falls under can you change what race you are once your character is made.

Like how in Achaea a Troll and Human can have a child that is a Grook, doesn't make much sense but it happens.

We probably won't have those systems in at launch. RP-wise, it doesn't make much sense that a Decheeran could have a W'hoorn child, though there's no reason at all they couldn't marry each other. Given the small population of MUDs, if/when we do implement a family system, we'll probably have to just ignore the likely biological incompatibility of races in favor of letting people have a big enough pool to choose from.

I forget if this was mentioned before. What is the time scale in Starmourn? I know Achaea goes by months and Aetolia goes by weeks, now, for each day. I personally prefer weeks, but that's a me thing.

In-game day = rl hour.
Each Galactic year has 15 Galactic months in it, each of which is 24 days long, so there are 360 days in a year.
Each month starts at 1 am GMT so that you know that day 18 in a month is 18:00 GMT. The idea here is to make it easier for people to translate between in-game and real time.

I have to ask, because every other month seems to have an extra day, does that mean every 4 In-Game years, there is an extra month added on?

Mr Aurelius, I know this was asked a long time ago but since we're getting closer I thought I would ask again. are we able to retire characters from other ire muds and transfer the credits into starmourn? thanks!

I forget if this was mentioned before. What is the time scale in Starmourn? I know Achaea goes by months and Aetolia goes by weeks, now, for each day. I personally prefer weeks, but that's a me thing.

In-game day = rl hour.
Each Galactic year has 15 Galactic months in it, each of which is 24 days long, so there are 360 days in a year.
Each month starts at 1 am GMT so that you know that day 18 in a month is 18:00 GMT. The idea here is to make it easier for people to translate between in-game and real time.

I have to ask, because every other month seems to have an extra day, does that mean every 4 In-Game years, there is an extra month added on?

Mr Aurelius, I know this was asked a long time ago but since we're getting closer I thought I would ask again. are we able to retire characters from other ire muds and transfer the credits into starmourn? thanks!

We haven't decided for sure one way or another, but are leaning towards no.

Mr Aurelius, I know this was asked a long time ago but since we're getting closer I thought I would ask again. are we able to retire characters from other ire muds and transfer the credits into starmourn? thanks!

We haven't decided for sure one way or another, but are leaning towards no.

Thank you sir, may you guys have no problems and this great quality game can be released soon we been chomping at the bits!

Mr Aurelius, I know this was asked a long time ago but since we're getting closer I thought I would ask again. are we able to retire characters from other ire muds and transfer the credits into starmourn? thanks!

We haven't decided for sure one way or another, but are leaning towards no.

That's a bit on the depressing side, I have 800 retirement credits sitting there. I was holding them waiting for Starmourn, it's my leftover credits from MKO being closed. Oh well

Mr Aurelius, I know this was asked a long time ago but since we're getting closer I thought I would ask again. are we able to retire characters from other ire muds and transfer the credits into starmourn? thanks!

We haven't decided for sure one way or another, but are leaning towards no.

That's a bit on the depressing side, I have 800 retirement credits sitting there. I was holding them waiting for Starmourn, it's my leftover credits from MKO being closed. Oh well If I remember correctly, the reason why they're leaning towards no is they don't want overpowered characters right off the bat.

What about a limit of retirement credits that can be spent? Like, being able to spend... 50? 100? credits initially, and then be able to spend the rest after 1 year. Just throwing that out there. I have no retirement credits, but I can understand how people who do would feel.

What about a limit of retirement credits that can be spent? Like, being able to spend... 50? 100? credits initially, and then be able to spend the rest after 1 year. Just throwing that out there. I have no retirement credits, but I can understand how people who do would feel.

What about a limit of retirement credits that can be spent? Like, being able to spend... 50? 100? credits initially, and then be able to spend the rest after 1 year. Just throwing that out there. I have no retirement credits, but I can understand how people who do would feel.

That's not a bad idea as a compromise actually. We'll consider it!

Another possibility that you guys may or may not like would be to allow retirement credits to be put towards skills only, rather than artifacts or the like. It would enable people to quickly get the skills necessary to fight or hunt or w/e it is they want to do, while still ensuring that people are on a mostly even playing field by not allowing retirement whales from buying every artie in existence on day 1.

My plan was to get a tradeskill or two at the start with my retirement credits then put rest into skills. I would be okay with not having them at the start if I knew I could get them at a later date on my character instead of restarting over to get them. I don't have the money to outright buy new credits, when I already have some that's been sitting there collecting dust. What ever is decided, I'll just suck it up at the end.

At launch, no, nothing like guilds. We decided to see how players interact with the three main orgs (Scatterhome, Song Dominion, Celestine Ascendancy) and then decide how we want to proceed on that front.